The Lady Rogue

by Jenn Bennett

  “No. I mean quite literally. Elena was tracing her family tree before she died, and Dr. Mitu was helping her. Over the years he forgot about it, until he came across a record of a wedding in 1487. It was for the marriage of Vlad’s child from his first wife, Mary—illegitimate daughter of John Hunyadi, Prince of Transylvania. Your mother can trace her family back to Vlad’s daughter.”

  I blinked at Liliana, unable to process this.

  Huck said, “Hold on. You’re saying Theo here is related to Vlad the Impaler?”

  “Why, yes,” the young woman said, leaning back in her chair with the coffee cup steaming under her chin. “I helped verify the documents for Dr. Mitu. You see, Vlad’s second wife was a Hungarian noblewoman, a cousin to Matthias Corvinus, the famous Hungarian king who was born here in Cluj—his statue is just down the road,” she said, gesturing with her head. “That line may have died out years ago, or there may be a descendant—the professor is still researching that. But what’s forgotten is that Vlad had a previous wife, when he was younger. His first wife drowned. She was a Transylvanian noblewoman from a village near Brașov.”

  “My mother’s hometown,” I murmured.

  “Exactly,” Liliana said in an excited voice. “In Vlad’s time, there was no united Romania. Transylvania and Wallachia were under separate rule. His first marriage would have likely been an attempt to keep things friendly between the two regions. But yes, the professor believes the research is sound. You are a daughter of Wallachia and Transylvania. Vlad’s blood flows in yours.”

  “That is . . .” Shocking. Alarming.

  “Unbelievable,” Huck murmured.

  The assistant didn’t notice though. She just looked pleased with herself—proud, even. “You are excited, I can tell.”

  That was not the word I’d use. In fact, I couldn’t use any words. I was speechless, and possibly on the verge of passing out.

  Liliana cleared her throat. Her gaze flicked from Huck’s paled face to mine. “I hope you’re pleased by the news. I know it’s a little shocking, what with Vlad’s dark reputation. But much of that was probably exaggerated by his enemies. You should be proud. The entire history department has been fascinated by this research. If you publicized it, you would be the darling of all Romania.”

  I blinked at her several times, trying to paste a smile on my face. “Thank you for sharing this. It’s a bit of a shock, but I’m certain . . .” I trailed off, not knowing what else to say. “I’m sorry, but we need to . . .” Need to what? I was losing my mind. Was this shock? I thought it must be.

  “We need to catch a bus,” Huck quickly said, rescuing me deftly before tipping his cap at Liliana. “Sorry to rush out of here. It was nice to meet you. Please tell the professor we stopped by when he returns from Egypt.”

  “Of course!” she said, flustered. “The pleasure has been mine.”

  I mumbled my thanks in a daze, but when Huck put a hand on my shoulder to lead me out of the office, I remembered something. “Sorry. One more thing,” I said, turning back to Liliana. “You said there was possibly another descendant. From Vlad’s second wife?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s a Hungarian in his forties. Dr. Mitu has been in touch with him. Actually, the professor was doing some ancestral research for this man this past spring when he first stumbled across the record that connected your mother to Vlad. It was a complete surprise.”

  I stilled. “You wouldn’t happen to remember this man’s name?”

  “Let me see . . . ,” she said, biting her lip. “I believe the man’s name was a Mr. Rothwild.”

  “Fuuuuuu . . . ,” Huck drawled under his breath.

  Goose bumps blossomed over my skin. I was not going to faint. I was, however, very close to vomiting.

  Liliana either didn’t notice or misinterpreted our shock. “Dr. Mitu has yet to conclusively find a link for him like yours. Regardless, I can say in all confidence that you are Vlad’s scion.”

  “Lucky me,” I whispered. “Lucky, lucky, lucky . . .”

  I didn’t finish. I just turned around and headed for the door, strode down the hallway, away from the office. Steel spine, chin up. Steel spine, chin up . . . I repeated it endlessly, but it wasn’t working. I couldn’t calm down. I just walked and walked, aimless and confused, until I heard Huck’s boots slapping against the floor as he jogged to catch up.

  “How do we get out of here?” I said, spinning in a circle. “I can’t remember how we came in. . . . I need air.”

  Huck grabbed my arm and hurried me across the hall to a set of glass doors. Cold air rushed over my face as we stepped onto a narrow balcony that overlooked an empty collegiate courtyard. A cracked porcelain bowl filled with cigarette butts sat near my feet.

  “Breathe,” he said, one hand flattened on my back. “Slowly. Exhale, inhale . . . There you go. You’re all right now.”

  I grasped the railing and breathed in brisk air until the shock passed. “I’m okay,” I said when I came back to my senses, and then, trying to minimize my embarrassment, “We keep ending up on balconies, don’t we? Good thing you’re wearing more than a towel this time.”

  He made a surprised noise in the back of this throat and glanced at me from the sides of his eyes, both sheepish and amused. “Well, you know what they say. Clothes make the man.”

  I wanted to laugh, but the cold air caused my eyes to water. “Oh, Huck,” I murmured.

  “What in the devil is happening?” he said, leaning on the railing with me.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” I whispered, knuckling away tears before they could fall.

  “Is this what Lovena meant by the ‘hands of fate’? Because they can go to hell right now.”

  When a student walked through the hall behind us, Huck mumbled something about ears listening and pulled the balcony door shut. “Okay, let’s think about this. Let’s say all this is true about your bloodline. It would explain why this dragon order has been hounding us. Maybe they don’t want the journal. Maybe they want you.”

  “Why?” I whispered.

  “Rothwild is obsessed with Vlad. Your father said as much in the journal. And this woman just implied that the professor was doing work for Rothwild. Is it a stretch to think they may have told Rothwild about your connection to Vlad? Maybe that’s why Rothwild hired Fox in the first place. To get to you. To play some kind of cat-and-mouse game.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Are you sure? Think about it, banshee. Fox says in the journal that he was constantly frustrated because every lead he chased had already been investigated by Rothwild.”

  I heard what he was saying, but I couldn’t make all the puzzle pieces slot together. Rothwild wanted Vlad Dracula’s ring, and I was positive there were three bands—that much I knew. And when Rothwild hired Father this summer, I was back home in New York, so he didn’t hire him to get to me. I think he truly wanted Father to track down the ring components. Father took the job, failed to find the other two bands this summer, quit the job, and then a few months later found a new lead in Turkey and renewed his search. There was no way Rothwild could know I’d be along for this trip.

  I wasn’t even convinced Rothwild knew there were three bands. For all we knew, he was still under the impression that there was one real ring.

  And yet he’d hired Dr. Mitu to research his ancestry?

  This was maddening.

  “Do you think Father knows about this genealogy research? The page in the journal that was torn out . . . Do you think he came by here after all, or telephoned Dr. Mitu? Did Father know and not tell me? He kept everything else from me—I didn’t even know he was in Romania this summer until he dropped me off in Istanbul. That’s when he told me he was hunting Vlad’s ring, Huck. When he had one foot out the door of my hotel room and was ready to go to Tokat.”

  “That was wrong,” Huck said. “That was very wrong.”

  “And if he knew this . . . this bombshell about my heritage and kept it from me?” I shook
my head violently as anger heated my chest. “It’s not even his to keep. It’s my bloodline, not his. My connection to my mother, not his!”

  “Whoa,” Huck said, hands on my shoulders, turning me to face him. “You don’t know that Fox knew about this. I can’t believe he’d hide that from you—”

  “Oh, I can,” I murmured. “He doesn’t respect me. He doesn’t care. He would definitely hide a piece of vital information from me and then toss me to the lions—or, in this case, the dragons. We’re surrounded by murder and mad occultists, Huck. Father has kept this from me and put us in danger, all in the same stroke.”

  “If, ” Huck insisted, forcing my gaze to connect with his. “If he even knew about your mother’s bloodline, maybe in his own bumbling way he thought he was protecting you from all this chaos—I know! It’s still not right. It’s more than not right; it’s downright foolish. He’s a great man, banshee, but he’s also a stubborn, shortsighted, occasionally stupid man.”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” I mumbled.

  “He doesn’t think. He’s not a planner. He just flies by the seat of his pants and hopes he lands on his feet. Usually he does, and that’s the maddening part of it. But I can’t for one second believe that he would do something on purpose to endanger you. And I don’t believe you think that either.”

  “Believe what you want,” I said, and then winced. “Damn it all! My eye hurts like something is splitting the socket from the inside out.”

  I turned away from him, angrily stripping off my beret so that I could rub my head in a feeble attempt to make the pain recede. Huck tugged on my arm and turned me back around.

  “Go on, then, let me look at it,” he said, hand lifting my chin, first gently, then insistently when I didn’t comply. “Quit being mulish and let me see. There. Was that so hard? Oooh, yes, that’s a shiner, all right. The swelling’s gone down since this morning, though, so that’s good.”

  “Nothing’s good,” I complained, shoving my beret into my coat pocket.

  “Mmm. Nothing at all?”

  “Almost nothing.”

  A soft smile rose, quivered, then hid.

  “What?” I said.

  “Just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  He shrugged lightly with one shoulder and turned my chin, inspecting my face. “The last time one of us was tending to the other’s black eye.”

  His gaze flicked to mine and then skittered away, back to the surgeon-like examination he was conducting on the scratches near my temple.

  “I remember,” I said softly. “First and last time I ever threw a party at Foxwood when Father was out of town.”

  “Aye, nothing like a little stolen champagne and a house full of rowdy teenagers to turn a birthday into a brawl. Scrapping like junkyard dogs.”

  “James Kendrick got you good in the eye that night.”

  “Sheer luck. It was his elbow, not his fist. And I recall getting in a pretty good hook of my own.”

  “You broke his beautiful nose, Huck—or at least, that’s what he shouted about a hundred times,” I said, smiling. “Saw him in town a month or so after you left. His nose looked fine, in case you were wondering.”

  “A shame.” His thumb feathered over my jaw, tracing a path, ever so lightly, as if he were studying roadways on a map. Tingles blossomed across my skin.

  A warm wave of shivers cascaded over my chest and down my arms. I forgot about the chilly air and the balcony. Forgot about Vlad Dracula and the bombshell that had been dropped on me. Rothwild. My anger at Father. The pain of my black eye. All of it vanished as I gazed up at Huck’s face.

  Hazel eyes, golden as whiskey, stared back at me under a fan of dark lashes and heavy lids. “Banshee,” he murmured in a deep, rich lilt. “Swear by all the saints, I really want to kiss you right now.”

  My heartbeat went erratic.

  “Do you?” I whispered.

  “You have no idea.”

  Oh, but I did.

  “Like I’ve never wanted anything in all my life.”

  “Like you’ll die without it?” I said, fisting his lapel in my trembling fingers.

  His nose grazed mine. “We shouldn’t.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Will only make things worse if we’re separated again,” he whispered as his hand cradled my cheek.

  “Unbearably painful,” I agreed.

  “But . . . ,” he murmured.

  “But . . .”

  His mouth hovered over mine, lingering. Hesitant. His hands held my face. I tugged on his lapel, pulling him closer. Closer.

  Until his lips brushed mine. We were both trembling. Both breathing as if we’d been running from a pack of wolves. I shuddered violently, and his mouth came down on mine.

  For a moment a stranger was kissing me. Someone wholly unfamiliar, unsure and clumsy. Someone who was nervous and made me nervous, and it was all wrong, and it wasn’t supposed to be like this, and then—

  We found each other.

  There you are.

  Rapture.

  We kissed each other like we’d been apart for lifetimes, searching for each other. Soft lips, warm mouth, deeply. Nothing between us. My armor disappeared, and he dropped his weapons, and we were both defenseless and exposed, and all the agony of the last year just . . . fell away. He was Huck. The same and yet different, a stranger and yet still mine. All mine. The scent of him, the taste of his mouth, the feel of his hands running down my back, pulling me against him until I could feel the unmistakable warm length of him between us, my breasts pressed to his chest . . .

  He still wanted me.

  I still wanted him.

  Nothing else mattered.

  This was too good, and I’d waited too long for it. Us. Together. Our separation had chiseled away at my soul, and now I held him like he was the answer to life itself. Everything I wanted.

  “Banshee?” he said against the side of my head.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s still there, what’s between us. It didn’t break or die.”

  “Still there,” I agreed.

  “Strong and stubborn, this thing.”

  More than I dared to imagine.

  But was it strong enough to survive the wrath of my father again? Or would we live to regret this?

  Being enemies was easy.

  Falling in love was harder.

  19

  IN THE TAXI RIDE FROM the university to the bus station, Huck and I held hands hard enough to make my knuckles ache, but I didn’t let go. His kisses clung to my stinging lips like a blissful dream that lazily lingers after sleep. In another place, under different circumstances, it would have been everything I wanted. But once we were back in the bustle of the city, thrust out of the taxi and into the cold, the tiresome burden of reality returned.

  We sloshed through melting snow to cross a busy street and barely made it to our bus on time. The driver was closing the doors, and Huck banged on them until we were allowed on grudgingly. The only seats available were at the very back of the bus. They smelled sour, and springs in the seats threatened to poke through worn holes in the fabric, but at least we were able to sit together.

  Huck lifted our luggage into a sagging net above our seats’ dirty window while across the aisle, a wizened Romanian woman with a floral kerchief tied over white hair stared at us as if we were monkeys in a zoo. If I had any hopes of canoodling with Huck, they were quashed; nothing like the judgmental stare of a nosy grandmother to put a damper on runaway feelings.

  Brașov was a five-hour trip through the Carpathians. After I settled against Huck’s side, my mind returned to everything the professor’s assistant had told us. Now that I’d gotten over the initial shock of it all, I was having trouble letting it sink in. I am related to Vlad the Impaler. One of the most vilified men in European history was my not-so-great-great-great-times-twenty-grandfather? I mean, sure, he lived well over four hundred years ago. But Lovena’s words still hung inside my head. Old blood. V
lad’s blood?

  Is this why I could hear the ring in the museum?

  I had a killer’s blood running in my veins?

  And Rothwild might also be Vlad’s descendant from another wife?

  Did Father know this? Did he?

  Huck glanced at me with a concerned look on his face. I tried to keep calm, to erect a false front and forget about all of it. Yet barbs of worry continued to plague my thoughts and prick at my chest.

  My family bloodline.

  Vlad the Impaler.

  His cursed ring of three bone bands.

  Order of the Dragon.

  Rothwild.

  Sarkany.

  Magical spells on banknotes.

  Wooden talismans.

  Dead bodies.

  Witches.

  Wolves.

  Father.

  In the middle of all this chainlike panicking, I suddenly remembered that we’d forgotten to return to the telegram window at the station to find out if Jean-Bernard’s butler had replied. How selfish was that? I was busy getting handsy with Huck, and the poor man could be at death’s door.

  That realization was my breaking point. I couldn’t think anymore. Couldn’t worry. Couldn’t panic. Couldn’t try to make impossible puzzle pieces fit together. My brain had reached its limits. It compartmentalized everything I’d learned on this trip into lockboxes, posted an “out of order” sign, and refused to cooperate.

  Eighteen across, “admit defeat.” W-H-I-T-E-F-L-A-G.

  The bus ride became easier after that. I fell into a dull daze, and Huck and I took turns staring at sweeping mountain vistas and napping on each other’s shoulders for much of the trip. Halfway through, the nosy Romanian woman in the floral kerchief kindly woke us when the bus stopped at a station with public restrooms and a street vendor selling fried dough. We took advantage of both, stretching our cramped legs, and returned to the bus for the final leg of its journey.

  To my mother’s hometown. And the Zissu brothers.

  And hopefully, to my wayward father.

  The rest of it could all go to hell.

  By the time we rolled into Brașov, the late-afternoon sun was falling behind snowy mountain peaks that surrounded the town like arms. The medieval town was a fairy-tale skyline of snow-dusted terra-cotta roofs, Gothic spires, and baroque buildings. I tried to imagine my mother living here and struggled. It was old-world, and she’d been so modern and revolutionary. Maybe that was why she had left: it was too small to hold her. Too sleepy and lost in time. When she spoke of it, I recalled, it was as if it were the setting of a fairy tale. Not entirely real.